Maintaining optimal digestive health is particularly important to vitality and well being throughout all stages of life. The efficiency of each person's digestive tract can make all the difference in daily energy and overall health. Nearly everybody experiences gastrointestinal discomfort, which affects quality of life.
Symptoms can be bloating, altered intestinal mobility and transit as well as abdominal pain. Many times these symptoms are combined with poor mood, lack of concentration and energy and may consequently prevent people from sleeping, working, exercising and socializing with friends.
Gastrointestinal discomfort is mainly triggered by ileum contractions, which can be caused by several factors. For example, daily stress, food sensitivity and allergies, infections, genetic preposition, altered gut flora or deregulation of brain-gut cross-talk may lead to development of gastrointestinal disorders, dyspepsia or irritations like irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or inflammatory bowel disease (IBD).
Promoting digestive comfort includes regulation of transit through the gastrointestinal tract and easing pain associated with digestion as well as to support the reduction of causes leading to gastrointestinal discomfort.
Gastrointestinal disorders are divided into structural and functional disorders. Structural diseases, e.g. hemorrhoids, types of colitis, like Morbus Crohn or C. ulcerosa as well as colon cancer, can be identified by pathologists and at times cured by medical technology. The nonstructural, functional gastrointestinal disorders, like functional dyspepsia (FD) or IBS are less amenable to explanation or effective treatment. On the one side physicians are traditionally looking for structural evidence in order to make diagnoses and on the other side patients are reluctant to speak clearly about their bowel and its malfunctions. This leads to the situation that functional gastrointestinal disorders are often not diagnosed and treated in a right way.Ref. 2,5 
More recent scientific studies link the mind and body as part of a system where their dysregulation can produce discomfort and disease. Early in life, genetics, in addition to environmental factors such as family influences on illness expression, abuse, major losses, or exposure to infections, may affect one's psychosocial development in terms of one's susceptibility to life stress or psychological state and coping skills, as well as susceptibility to gut dysfunction—abnormal motility, altered mucosal immunity, or visceral hypersensitivity. Furthermore, these “brain-gut” variables reciprocally influence their expression. Therefore, functional gastrointestinal disorders are a product of this interaction of psychosocial factors and altered gut physiology via the brain-gut axis.Ref. 5 
Recent drug development target neuropeptides and receptors present in the enteric and CNS to treat stress-mediated effects of CNS modulation of the gut. Under development are drugs targeting serotonin, enkephalins and opioid agonists, substance P, calcitonin gene-related polypeptide, cholecystokinin, neurokinin receptor, and corticotrophin-releasing hormone antagonists, etc.
New drugs for IBS-d targeting the neurotransmitter serotonin and its receptors have been approved. Due to serious side effects, they have only been approved with significant restriction for women only and severe IBD for patients, who have not responded to conventional therapy.Ref. 3,5 
It is estimated that, 10 to 20 percent of the worlds' total population is affected with IBS. It is estimated that amongst the total affected with IBS, 60% percent are females and 40% are males. It is also believed that about 70 percent amongst those affected with IBS do not seek for doctors' help. IBS is a common problem but most of the people affected with it are either not aware about the problem or tend to avoid to discuss with the physician.
Thus, it is important to develop functional foods and dietary supplement ingredients besides developing drugs.
The whole length of the bowel is controlled by a nervous system, which carries signals back and forward between the gut and the brain, controlling factors such as how fast food is pushed through the intestines. Understanding this basic neuroenteric mechanisms and the brain-gut axis demonstrated the need for an agent ameliorating gastrointestinal irritations at both neurotropic and musculotropic levels.
Despite considerable efforts by academic researchers and pharmaceutical and food industry, the development of novel ingredients to prevent, reduce or treat functional gastrointestinal disorders or to reduce their symptoms has been slow and did not lead to innovations.
The object for the present invention was to provide novel active ingredients to prevent and improve, i.e. ameliorate, functional gastrointestinal discomfort and diseases, like IBS, suitable as functional food, dietary supplement ingredients and drugs.